A Sonnet by Malcolm Guite

For the past several weeks and until August, we are dedicating our Weekly Compass to parishioners’ reflections on those people Malcolm Guite calls “Ordinary Saints.” These saints are college professors, grandfathers, dads and moms, coaches, and teachers who have, in their ordinary way, pointed us to the extraordinary love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. This week’s Compass features a poem by Fr. Malcolm, which encapsulates the wondrous value of these saints—the saints who, when we looked at them, looked back.

The ordinary saints, the ones we know,
Our too-familiar family and friends,
When shall we see them? Who can truly show
Whilst still rough-hewn, the God who shapes our ends?
Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold
That is and always was our common ground,
Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold
To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound
From which the light we never noticed fell
Into our lives? Remember how we turned
To look at them, and they looked back? That full-
-eyed love unselved us, and we turned around,
Unready for the wrench and reach of grace.
But one day we will see them face to face.